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The most recent water supply reports for the Columbia River Basin showed a continuing trend of deteriorating conditions due to warmer-than-average temperatures, below-average precipitation through much of the basin and a rapid, early runoff from mountain snowpack across the region.

The late winter presence of marine mammals in the lower Columbia River has been huge, and obvious, with animals settling in at Astoria, Ore., and other estuary sites to prey, many suspect, on returning eulachon.

Fish protections, irrigator access and hydro power generation are chief among the concerns at the mid-Columbia River’s Wanapum Dam, where on Feb. 27 a 65-foot long horizontal crack was discovered at one of the facility’s 12 spillways.

For the eighth year in a row, energy efficiency improvements in 2012 exceeded the annual target established by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the Council reported this week.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has fielded an estimated 197 comments over the past two months regarding how it should amend its Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program.

The Bonneville Power Administration will not pay for gill netting lake trout on Flathead Lake unless there is management consensus between the state of Montana and the Confederated Salish-Kootenai Tribes, and talks have been under way on developing a new co-management plan for the lake.

About 480 recommendations are in hand and due for consideration by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council as it works toward the amendment of its fish and wildlife program for the Columbia-Snake river basin.

An Independent Economic Advisory Board “update” released this week indicates that the money spent – an estimated $5 million per year from a variety of sources -- in attempts to ward off an invasion of non-native zebra and quagga mussels into the Columbia River basin is money well spent.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council voted June 21 to extend by two months the time allowed for Indian tribes and state and federal fish and wildlife agencies to recommend actions and objectives for reshaping the Council's Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife program.

An assessment by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff shows that the efficiency of electricity use continues to improve and that the region is on track to meet the Council’s goal to improve efficiency by 1,200 average megawatts in the five years between 2010 and 2014.

The upper Columbia River basin in British Columbia and northern reaches in Idaho and Montana have held their own over the past month, suffering dry stretches but enjoying a few wet, snowy storms in recent days that have helped hold the basin’s water runoff volume expectations near, though slightly below, average for the spring and summer.

The world has changed for salmon as a result of human development.

But, perhaps even more so, it has changed for the large, long-lived white sturgeon that historically ventured up the Columbia River system as far as British Columbia’s Windermere Lake, and branched off up into the Snake River basin until being blocked by Shoshone Falls in southern Idaho.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has two assigned tasks under the Northwest Power Act, and they must be completed in synchrony, not as independent products, according to petitioners asking a federal appeals court to order a reconsideration of the NPCC’s “Sixth Power Plan” and Columbia River basin fish and wildlife restoration goals encased in it.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced this week that it has chosen longtime Northwest power industry official Bill Drummond to be the new Bonneville Power Administration administrator. He is currently the deputy administrator.

In just seven years, one of the two coal-fired power plants in the Northwest and one unit at the other will shut down, reducing the region’s power supply by an amount equal to about twice the power demand of Seattle.

A legal challenge to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s “Sixth Power Plan” is misdirected, and should be rejected, say intervenors in a consideration process now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has announced that Montana Council member Rhonda Whiting will serve out the remaining term as Council chair, replacing for Oregon member Joan Dukes.

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced this week that Pendleton’s Henry C. Lorenzen has been nominated to serve on the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

Charlie Black has been named the new director of Power Planning at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

The Pacific Northwest is likely to continue producing more electricity than it needs in the spring and early summer, a time when demand for power usually is low and the supply of hydropower and wind power can be high because of seasonal storms and the annual snowmelt runoff in the region’s rivers, says an analysis by Northwest Power and Conservation Council staff.

Scientific discussion continues regarding the existence, extent and/or causes of delayed or latent mortality in salmon and steelhead that must negotiate, particularly, the Columbia-Snake river hydro system.

Recent technical memorandums issued by the Fish Passage Center served as warnings, though not the final word, that latent/delayed mortality caused by passage down through the mainstem Columbia-Snake river hydro system may occur in salmon and steelhead, according to an Oct. 13 FPC memo responding to a critique from the Independent Scientific Advisory Board.

Increased conservation during 2010 by Pacific Northwest electricity users saved 254 average megawatts, the equivalent annual power use of 153,900 homes, according to the annual “Utility Conservation Achievements Report” released this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and Regional Technical Forum.

A draft annual report offered this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council for public takes a look back at everything from the effectiveness of its fish and wildlife program to power system happenings during fiscal year 2011, which ends at the end of the month.

The Northwest Power and Conservation Council unanimously elected Joan Dukes, an Oregon member of the Council, vice chair this week for the remainder of 2011. Dukes replaces Dick Wallace, a Washington member, in the position. Wallace resigned from the Council in June.

High water has started to cause some problems at the outset of a flood season that is expected to last for weeks in the Upper Columbia River Basin.

Columbia Basin Trust and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council have renewed their agreement to collaborate on projects “that promote an understanding and appreciation of the international Columbia River Basin.”

The 20-year-old northern pikeminnow management program has matured to the point of nearing a major milestone – reducing that species’ consumption of juvenile salmon and steelhead by 50 percent from pre-program levels.

Fifteen years of monitoring a suite of 16 physical, biological and ecological “indicators” of ocean conditions has left NOAA Fisheries scientists confident they could now predict with reasonable certainty how young salmon from the Columbia River might fare during their first few months in the Pacific Ocean.

The Independent Scientific Review Panel and Peer Review Groups this week completed their final review of 99 proposals submitted for funding through the Northwest Power and Conservation Council’s Columbia River Basin Fish and Wildlife Program.

The Bonneville Power Administration's total fish and wildlife expenditures for 2009 -- $745.2 million -- bring the grand total since 1978 (when the expenditures began) to $12.69 billion, according to a draft report prepared by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday increased water releases from west-central Idaho's Dworshak Dam and Reservoir in hopes of spurring the outmigration of juvenile steelhead and salmon in the lower Clearwater and lower Snake rivers.

The Northwest electricity supply will remain adequate throughout the spring and summer despite a Columbia River basin water supply that is expected to be far below average, according to an analysis by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.

A new regional power plan adopted this week by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council says 85 percent of the new demand for electricity over the next 20 years in the Northwest can be met by using energy more efficiently.

In its Sixth Power Plan, The Northwest Power and Conservation Council ran a modeling scenario examining the effects of removing the lower Snake River dams on power system costs and carbon emissions.

Montana's Bruce Measure on Wednesday was elected unanimously by members to serve as chair of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council during 2010.